Economics Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

It would be bourgeois narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion that weighs upon mankind is merely a product and reflection of the economic yoke within society.

Economics that hurt the moral well-being of an individual or a nation are immoral and, therefore, sinful.

I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The true law of economics is chance, and we learned people arbitrarily seize on a few moments and establish them as laws.

Political institutions are a superstructure on the economic foundation.

Economic equality of my conception does not mean that every one will literally have the same amount.

Throughout the world, change is the order of the day. In every Nation economic problems, long in the making, have brought crises of many kinds for which the masters of old practice and theory were unprepared. In most Nations social justice, no longer a distant ideal, has become a definite goal, and ancient Governments are beginning to heed the call.
Thus, the American people do not stand alone in the world in their desire for change. We seek it through tested liberal traditions, through processes which retain all of the deep essentials of that republican form of representative government first given to a troubled world by the United States.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

For a city or a people to be truly free they must have the secure right, without economic, political or police pressure, to make their own choice and to live their own lives.

John F. Kennedy

I wish I could say that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had done himself less than justice. Unfortunately, I can only say that I believe he has done himself justice. Some Chancellors are macro-economic. Other Chancellors are fiscal. This one is just plain cheap.

Margaret Thatcher

Our Program is based entirely on the scientific, and moreover the materialist, world outlook. An explanation of our Program, therefore, necessarily includes an explanation of the true historical and economic roots of the religious fog.

To ignore social costs because they require an evaluation by society... and to leave social losses out of account because they are 'external' and 'non-economic' in character, would be equivalent to attributing no or 'zero' value to all social damages which is no less arbitrary and subjective a judgement than any positive or negative evaluation of social costs.

Karl William Kapp

So-called racial differences in IQ scores are more a consequence of disparities in socioeconomic status and the quality of education than of any genetic differences between ethnic groups. Efforts to improve educational quality and opportunity can increase the economic benefits associated with increased educational achievement.

Daniel J. Fairbanks

It was a global depression, had many causes, the whole story requires you to look at the whole international system. But policy errors in United States, as well as abroad, did play an important role. And in particular as I said, the Federal Reserve failed in this first challenge in both parts of its mission. It did not use monetary policy aggressively to prevent deflation and the collapse in the economy, so it failed in its economic stability function. And it didn't adequately perform its function as lender of last resort allowing many bank failures and a resulting contraction in credit and also with the money supply. So, in that respect, again, the Fed did not fulfill its intended mission.

I don't think President Obama and Vice President Biden get the credit they deserve for saving us from the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes.

Hillary Clinton

The real struggle today, just as in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, is between a view of the world termed liberalism or radicalism, for which the primary object of government and of foreign policy is peace, freedom of trade and intercourse, and economic wealth and that other view, militarist or rather diplomatic, which thinks in terms of power, prestige, national or personal glory, the imposition of a culture and hereditary or racial prejudice. To the good English radical, the latter is so unreal, so crazy in its combination of futility and evil, that he is often in danger of forgetting or disbelieving its actual existence.

John Maynard Keynes

All economic activity is dependent upon that environment and its underlying resource base of forests, water, air, soil, and minerals. When the environment is finally forced to file for bankruptcy because its resource base has been polluted, degraded, dissipated, and irretrievably compromised, the economy goes into bankruptcy with it.

One can justify solar-hydrogen simply on grounds of economic resource viability without any green agenda.

We believe in peace and peaceful development, not only for ourselves but for people all over the world. Our main preoccupation is with economic and social development at home and peace and friendship abroad.

Lal Bahadur Shastri

The struggle for power is universal in time and space and is an undeniable fact of experience. It cannot be denied that throughout historic time, regardless of social, economic and political conditions, states have met each other in contests for power. Even though anthropologists have shown that certain primitive peoples seem to be free from the desire for power, nobody has yet shown how their state of mind can be re-created on a worldwide scale so as to eliminate the struggle for power from the international scene. … International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power. Whatever the ultimate aims of international politics, power is always the immediate aim.

Hans Morgenthau

In a world wracked by hatred, economic crisis, and political tension, America remains mankind's best hope.

Anyone who has actually had to take responsibility for consequences by running any kind of enterprise — whether economic or academic, or even just managing a sports team — is likely at some point to be chastened by either the setbacks brought on by his own mistakes or by seeing his successes followed by negative consequences that he never anticipated.

The socialist system, however, forbids this fundamental freedom to choose one's own career. Under socialist conditions, there is only one economic authority, and it has the right to determine all matters concerning production.

Ludwig von Mises

America is a much newer experiment in human living, one with moral concerns at its core. In this respect it differs from Europe, which has preferred sophistication and worldly wisdom to "righteousness," and resembles China, which saw the universe itself as essentially a moral order. However materialistic Americans may be in their economic pursuits, their ceremonies emphasize the material far less than European societies have. America has imposing official architecture. Washington, D. C., boasts a radial baroque stateliness. Yet one of its most important buildings, the White House, is a modest dwelling, its scale far smaller than that of the palaces of Europe and Asia.

The interactions of business and culture, one upon the other, form one of the least explored phases of history. For such a study, no city would appear better fixed than Florence, so richly dowered with both economic and spiritual vitality.

A reduction in the liberty of the least well off cannot be justified even if it is to their economic advantage.